It's caused by cheap money. Google's recent $10B bond offering sold at rates as low as 0.45%. When capital is this cheap, the math to make acquisitions work is easy. If rates rise to say 5%, the discounted cash flow models all fall apart. It's one more example of printing money and keeping rates near 0 increasing inequality.
What is the problem with the company’s owners being the largest beneficiaries in a transaction in which they are choosing to buy or sell their own assets?
1. Competition for the sake of competition is not an end in itself. Competition is a means to an end, not a promise or guarantee. See also: the T-Mobile and Sprint merger.
2. New businesses are started as new opportunities arise. Wherever a market inefficiency is perceived, there are people who seek to exploit this inefficiency for their own benefit. Even the businesses that fail employ some people for some time; it’s not important that the same businesses that exist today continue to exist in perpetuity, but that the business environment continues to encourage people to take new risks and start new ventures.
3. Stop bailing out failing businesses. Would it hurt the S&P 500 if a FAANG company filed for bankruptcy? Yes, but that’s irrelevant. Socializing losses only encourages more businesses to take on more risk than would normally be acceptable to them and their shareholders if they think there’s a good chance they’ll be bailed out by taxpayers. Sometimes businesses, even big businesses fail, and that’s part of the environment, not something to be prevented at all costs. The stock market is a reflection of market activity, it isn’t the market.
It doesn't benefit anyone outside the groups you mention, you're right. Many people outside those groups are lured by the false promise that they too could make it into one of those groups, so they work against their own interest.
0. Founders, non-executive employees, and even sometimes end-users can benefit, just as much or more than executives or shareholders.
1. Not really true in general, because the buyee often was not in direct competition with the buyer. In specifics, sure sometimes the buyee is bought and killed, and sure sometimes "build it (and compete)" was actually in consideration at buyer -- though as an aside if they did build it instead of buy it we'd still get complaints from other people on finding a way to discourage product expansion and vertical integration. One could also say here that by eliminating middlemen (if the buyer intends to integrate that is) efficiency is increased, but this is not necessarily general either.
2. Marginally less employer competition, and perhaps not even that, because under 0 we've got a group of beneficiaries who may now be able to form or fund new companies, in direct competition or not. Avoid static pie thinking. Related here is an opposing concern that preventing mergers can result in a lower cap on wages, though this is not general either. I do concede that if we expand the pool of employees beyond software engineers, some sort of layoff protection may be desirable, because technically and instantaneously yes the now-irrelevant laid off accountants for example at the buyee have a tighter market to compete in as buyer doesn't want them and their old job has vanished. (Though many layoff packages already implicitly do something like this, the net effect is to give the individual more time to find a role at a different firm or else retool because the market has reallocated the demand for their role.)
3. Being too big to fail isn't really related with the scope of a company's product catalog. Fragility is a big topic.
Rather than spouting my own ideological biases and principles I'd rather ask some numbers questions. Specifically what thresholds would you consider reasonable before introducing your discouragements/blockers. #2 seems most tractable to start with -- say the US has 5 million software engineers, Facebook has 50,000 of them, and wants to acquire another company with 15,000 software engineers. Is the shift above 1% of employees in the field to 1.3% objectionable? Or do we not worry until a single firm employs say 30% of the field? Is the relative increase of 0.3% too big a merger regardless of the starting point? Or is there even such a too-big relative size and we should just look at the final total? Should we count the total employees at each company, or rather subdivide even further taking into account sales, accountants, and perhaps even types of software engineers?
"We need to find a way to discourage mega-mergers." Why? If YouTube or Instagram didn't get acquired, Google and Facebook would find a way to destroy them just like Microsoft did to Netscape and they wouldn't exist anymore but in essence they are great products and there are no other products like them on the market. Once they get destroyed there is less competition and at least when they are alive you can look up to them for quality of service and motivation to compete.
I don’t know. I’m feeling the need for large gatekeepers especially in the media space. I have lost faith in the public’s ability to make reasoned decisions for themselves.
I feel like this approach addresses a symptom but not the root problem. How can people regain a shared truth and stop becoming so polarized while still prioritizing freedom of expression?
I feel like a gatekeeper provided experience will have a moderating influence that will bring people back to a shared narrative over time. Possibly a very long time.